Romance and Renault Sport form a great Valentine’s partnership

Some R.S. are red
Others are blue
We wrote Valentine’s love poems
Our fans joined in too!

When it comes to Renault Sport, you could be excused for thinking that our eyes are fixed firmly on the chequered flag and how technology from the race track translates into the cars we love driving and seeing on the roads. While it’s true the teams behind our design, engineering, technology and safety departments lead the way in their fields, they aren’t the only slickly oiled machines in the Renault universe.

In an era where communications are more important than ever, our marketing, PR and social teams work extremely hard to get the R.S. message across to a number of different stakeholders, including the media, partners and, perhaps most importantly, the huge and passionate R.S. fan base.

Interacting with those fans in an engaging manner on social media and other channels is a key part of the company’s communications strategy. R.S. fans are smart, passionate, fun and inspiring – like the brand itself – and communications have to engage with them in a similar style.

Reaching out and communicating with them involves more than just a few ad-hoc Facebook posts or Tweets, it requires a well-thought out strategy created by inspiring communications teams that are as dedicated behind the computer keyboard as Renault Sport engineers are in the paddock.

A great example of this came last month when the in-house communications team at Renault Sport liaised with two of its agency partners to create a Valentine’s Day campaign that highlighted all the elements that Renault Sport fans love about themselves and the brand, adding in some romance-tinged fun along the way.

Working alongside partners at digital agency HYD and the creative team at OMD Create, an idea was sprung to ask R.S. fans to submit images of their cars in exchange for a bespoke Valentine’s poem. Plans in place, the morning of the international day of love saw an image of a smoking Mégane R.S. posted across the R.S. social channels accompanied by the following poem:

Meganes are red,
Clios are blue,
Comment with a pic of your R.S.
And we’ll write a poem for you.
#ValentinesDay

Before long the picture submissions were flowing in faster than a Nürburgring lap by the Mégane R.S. Trophy-R. From a Twingo R.S. gleaming by a lake, to a beautiful Renault Sport Spider resplendent in Liquid Yellow, hundreds of images of R.S. cars were submitted from around the globe, proving just how strong the R.S. fan base is – and how much they adore their cars!

As they started to pour in, the budding Byrons and wannabe Wordsworths on the Renault Sport social team and partner agencies rose to the challenge, penning witty poems for almost six hours. The poems proved to be light-hearted and fun – and were much appreciated by the R.S. owners, with more than 11,000 R.S. fans taking part, resulting in roughly 3,000 interactions.

Those wishing to see them all can check out the R.S. social channels, but one the teams were particularly proud of was dedicated to Twitter user @bscott_996 whose R.S. was marginally over a parking line:

Because you know your R.S.
Puts a smile on peoples faces
You don’t have any problem
Taking up two parking spaces

Another, in reply to a Facebook post by Justin Junge, who submitted a shot of his R.S. from ground level, provided this witty response:

To capture this angle
You had to lay down in the dirt
I hope you weren’t wearing
Your best R.S. shirt

Finding new, engaging ways of communicating with the R.S. fanbase is almost a challenge as big as trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to manufacturing cars. When it comes to cars, we are involved in important manufacturing partnerships with market leaders in their fields such as Akrapovič; when it comes to communications, we also have partnerships with leading creative specialists such as HYD and OMD Create. The Valentine’s Day poetry campaign met with and exceeded our expectations and proved to be a runaway success with the R.S. community.